Free A Dream of Horses & Other Stories by Aashish Kaul Page A

punctured its melancholy; life wasmore or less peaceful and without pretence. Under the veil of political and bureaucratic torpor, there was a certain playfulness in its spirit.
    Winter was coming, that time of the year which always made the sky clear and blue. With a hint of chill in the noon wind, the sun’s warmth gave comfort. We had been to the cinema, and were now sitting on a bench beside an ice-cream parlour digging our spoons in a sundae. Close to the bench was a fig tree from where a myna whistled to us from time to time. Asya had been uncommonly reticent, and I had asked her about it a few times. She had denied this, yet I knew there was something to it. Nothing though that I couldn’t have dispelled as pointless.
    But how wrong you are, how foolish. How you think light and bliss will last forever when the void is opening at your feet. And to fall into it is your only destiny. Oh, but why deviate? Come forth without further circumlocutions, and speak of how when night fell over that day and anytime thereafter you have known little peace. Tell how when you saw the void only too late you felt vertigo from which you could never recover. Like a ghost you wandered, consuming days aimlessly with a wish to reach the end of time and see beyond, to embrace it and at long last begin anew.
    Her house wasn’t far away and we began walking towards it. She lived in one of those pretty places in the south of the city, close to the institute of technology, where it is so enjoyable to walk in the evenings. She was talking to me, but I was lost in strange images of the days ahead. Lamps that lit up the street threw faint shadows on the ground, a sickle of a moon was slowly climbing up in the sky. Suddenly there swelled in me an irresistible urge to embrace her, to make one final effort. First I held myself back, but then, unable to hold my reserve, I put my arms around her. She did not resist, but her body felt slightly stiff. I wasn’t discouraged: where the bond is strong, discouragement doesn’t come easily. I moved to kiss her, but she bent herhead a little and my lips ended up brushing her cheek. Tears welled up in my eyes and, turning away without a word, I walked into the growing darkness.
    I did not see her again. But my mind, rather obstinately, kept reliving the past – a past which had already started to look obscure and meaningless. A past you have to fight, a duel from which you don’t emerge free of scars.
    In time time went astray. I couldn’t keep up with it. Days melted into each other, and I went tumbling through them, all along thinking of those eyes that had been so still they reflected whatever fell to their lot: those clear brown eyes had been a mirror not of within but of without.
    Having spent a month or so in this timelessness, I decided a change of place might do me good. I called up my sister in London, where she taught at a city college, and on a damp December morning left the city.
    VI
    Whereas it had snowed in the night, a bright morning sun was shining above the mountains, stoking the air with light. Snow that had collected on the ground and in solemn nooks was starting to melt under its warmth. Misty vapours rose from it and quickly vanished into the brightness. Although I had watched the snow fall all night, I was not tired. The evening before, having drained away the weariness in the shower, I had gone to the clubhouse.
    When I left the bar at about ten it was dark and cold outside, and I wasted little time to get to my room. It was comfortably warm, with the electric heater in the hearth doing the job well. I decided to play
Goldberg Variations
. In a while, it began to snow.
    Next morning I thought of exploring the place. The previous day, walking through the bazaar, I had seen the spire of a church, and to its side the cupola of a building which had appearedround and big. I asked the caretaker about it. He told me that it was an old library, perhaps the oldest in this part of the country.